Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 is now available - download IE7 here

Click here to download Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2. IE 7 is nearing release bringing with it a wealth of security improvements including significant re-engineering and new features including the anti-phishing filter.

Much will no doubt be made of the functionality improvements too such as the neat tabbed group handling - you can preview all open tabs and save them too. IE 7 does a good job of making the browsing experience richer. My interest lies of course in the improved security.

The Phishing Filter makes it really easy to tell when the target website is suspicious either by the URL (none Fully Qualified Domain Name, mis-spelling, replacement of letters with numbers et al) and by referencing an online database of known illicit sites.

Please let me know how you get on by posting a comment. This is of course beta software so it's not recommended for use in production environments.

Steve,
I don't mean to begin bursting the IE7 baloon, but will Microsoft be including IE7PB2 within the monthly patch cycle ?

The reason for asking is that Microsoft have released the product into the public arena, and whilst they state that "this should not be used upon a live system", there are many beta users out there who use it as their main browser, and therefore are present to the risks and vulnerabilities that have been released.

Whilst I can understand Microsoft's approach that the product has not been placed into full production; there is also the arguement that Microsoft have released the product into the public arena, and therefore should responsibly patch any vulnerabilities, and risks that may arise.

Morally, I believe that if Microsoft are willing to ask users to test their software with the public release of the beta software then there is also the responsibility that the product is duely patched in a responsible way.

Concerning the transition from Public Beta to Live Product, is there any information upon how this will be handled.

Currently, the user is required to remove the application through add/remove programs, which entails a system rollback; after which the users' system is vulnerable to attack, (updates and patches having been removed). A logical approach to this would be that the application is either updated in situ, or the ability for the user to download a single removal/update application that will allow the removal of the Beta prior to the Live version which will be conducted with the network access disabled thereby ensuring the integrity of the system with updates installed upon first reboot after the installation of IE7 Live.

Grateful for your thoughts

Arthur

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14 Jun 2006 2:46 AM

The IE Team blog have announced that Internet Explorer running on Windows Vista will be known as Internet...

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